Re: Uninterruptable sleep D state (was Re: Unkillable rm -rf on

Mathias Froehlich (frohlich@na.mathematik.uni-tuebingen.de)
Tue, 17 Feb 1998 17:27:28 +0100

>
> First, some observations:
>
> 1) I first saw processes locking up in the D state when trying to
>make an iso9660 image back on kernel 2.1.36 with a RedHat 4.2 system.
>(i.e., the root problem may be old).
>

I saw this problem when I switched to an other SCSI controller.
I was using a Gigabyte GA686-DX whith a ncr8310 pci SCSI controler,
with that configuration I had no problems (with d state processes).
I had very big other problems thie the ATX power switch and that board,
so I decided to sell the Gigabyte board and buy the ASUS P97LX-DS.
I had never such problems with the ncr SCSI controller, and the first
few days I used the ncr comtroller with that ASUS board, without
problems, dumping the whole filesystem from the old harddisk to a
bigger new one. The old harddisk was still connected to the ncr
controller, the new one to the aic7880, no problems at all!
Then I switched to the new harddisk and removed the ncr SCSI
controller. This was the first time I had the first problems with D
state processes.
May be that the time while the ncr card was running with the LX
chipset on the ASUS PII board was not long enough to see the bug ...

Yea, a checklist!
> Questions for anyone else experiencing processes getting stuck in
>the D (uninterruptible sleep) state:
>
> a) Is your system SCSI only? What controller/driver?
Yes only SCSI, without problems with Gigabyte+ncr, with problems
ASUS+aic7880. I use the native aic7xxx driver from the linux kernel
tree.
>
> b) Is your system drive IDE? Do you have any SCSI devices?
>
Pure SCSI

> c) Are you using md? What modes?
>
No.
> d) Do you have more than one swap partition? Is it equal priority?
>
One swap with 128MB
> e) What process(es) do you see hanging?
>
cp, rm, mv, gzip, bzip2, update, mcopy (from a MO or zip disk),
emacs (!) ...
> f) What type of ethernet controller/driver?
>
no ethernet.
> g) Are you running X windows? Which X server?
XFree 3.3.1, but I had hanging state D processes on text console,
without running X on an other console.

Regards ...

Mathias Fr"ohlich

-- 
Mathias Fr"ohlich              e-mail: frohlich@na.uni-tuebingen.de
Institut f"ur Mathematik, Universit"at T"ubingen, D-72076 T"ubingen


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